


The One With the Baby on the Bus

by sparkly_butthole



Series: Losers Bingo [4]
Category: The Losers (2010), The Losers (Comic)
Genre: Accidental Baby Acquisition, Crack, M/M, Pre-Slash, gratuitous Friends references
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-19
Updated: 2020-02-19
Packaged: 2021-02-28 00:08:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,129
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22794511
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sparkly_butthole/pseuds/sparkly_butthole
Summary: What kind of scary-ass clowns came to your birthdays?
Relationships: Carlos "Cougar" Alvarez/Jake Jensen
Series: Losers Bingo [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1509350
Comments: 17
Kudos: 45
Collections: Losers Bingo 2019/20





	The One With the Baby on the Bus

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah, so you guys can thank my husband that this wasn’t a whole helluva lot more angsty than it is. 
> 
> Written for my losers bingo square “Accidental acquisition of a child.”

  
  
  


“Hey.  _ Hey. _ Check her out.”

Cougar nearly loses his footing as the bus hits a bump. He sways into the stranger at his back, grips the pole with one hand and holds tightly to the baby carrier with the other. 

When he’s steady enough to turn and look, Jensen’s beaming at him. His grin gets even wider with Cougar’s glare. 

Does he  _ want _ Cougar to drop his niece?

Jensen reads it all in his face because he’s a big, dumb, beautiful asshole who knows Cougar almost as well as he knows himself. From the moment they’d met at boot camp, Jensen had had the measure of Cougar. 

He’s flattered that Jake hadn’t found him wanting. 

“We can do it,” Jake whispers excitedly in Cougar’s ear. “She looks the type.”

Cougar closes his eyes with a sigh and says a prayer:  _ Please, Lord, give me the patience _ , and turns to catch a glimpse without being too obvious. 

Okay, so she’s cute. He doesn’t think she ‘looks the type,’ but hey - who knows. Worst she can do is tell them no, right?

But wait, the girl next to her - they’re talking, they’re friends - and she is  _ smoking _ hot, short and slightly plump, just Cougar’s type - and yeah, okay, he can get on board with this. He can do this.

_ Didn’t take much convincing _ , Cougar thinks ruefully. 

Jake’s eyes are absolutely gleaming when Cougar turns back to him. Because he knows. He  _ knows.  _

“You’re a dork.”

“We should talk to them.”

Cougar raises an eyebrow pointedly. 

“Okay,  _ you  _ should talk to them. Then me.”

He nods, shifts his balance, and hands Jake the baby. Jake slaps him on the back one-handed and way harder than necessary, with a whispered _ go get ‘em, tiger _ ! 

The bus is crowded enough that he has to worm his way through several jostling figures, but hey, could be worse - he could be Jensen. 

The plump one sees him coming and murmurs something to her friend with a giggle. Her face is rosy, embarrassed, and she won’t meet his eyes. 

Oh, yes. This one is  _ his. _

“Ladies,” he says, tipping his hat and giving them his best  _ come-hither _ smile. 

“Wow, I love your accent!” the taller one, a brunette with unfair dimples, says. “Are you from around here?”

It’s New Hampshire, so odds are good that no, that’s not the case. Dumb question, but it’s a good opportunity to introduce Jake. “No, but my friend is.” He waves in Jake’s direction. He’s found a seat since the last stop. Emily’s in the seat next to him in her little carrier, still sound asleep. That kid could sleep through anything; she takes after her uncle for sure.

“Oh, just visiting?” the other asks with an obvious air of disappointment. 

“We’re military. But we visit when on leave. His sister is nearby.”

“Ah,” the plump girl says with relief, then holds out her hand. Cougar shakes it; she’s got a strong grip. Now he’s picturing her with those hands… elsewhere. “I’m Rebecca. This is my friend, Anya.” 

“Nice to meet you both.” He beckons Jake over, and sees with delight that Anya is enjoying her eyeful of hot military man. “This is Jake. I’m Carlos, but call me Cougar.” 

“Hi!” Jake says brightly, and god, if only the man knew how charming he can be. It’s only his lack of confidence in new situations that leads to his lack of success in dating; if people got the opportunity to know the real Jake underneath his bumbling exterior, they’d all run from Cougar’s arms straight to Jake’s in a heartbeat. “We saw you from over there, so I told him to go and get your numbers. I mean, that is, if you want to. Don’t feel pressured or anything.” 

Anya is amused and biting her lip; if Cougar’s reading this right, she’ll be riding his face later, and might even end up with a riding crop marking up that tight ass of his. 

“And what if you didn’t get the one of us you wanted?” Rebecca asks, giving Cougar a wink. 

“Actually,” Jake starts, and oh no, this is where it goes wrong, Cougar can read it in the air. “We were kind of wondering about a three-way before we saw both of you, and now it’s even better… “

Cougar kicks him in the leg. 

_ “Ow _ ! What was that for?” 

Cougar gives him A Look before turning to the girls. Did Jake’s neat foot-in-mouth trick cost them a hookup? 

Doesn’t look like it. Anya’s eyebrows have climbed her forehead but she looks far from pissed. Rebecca is eyeing them thoughtfully, her head tilted. 

Score one for Jake.

“Ah, we’re getting off at the next stop,” Anya says carefully. “How about you boys? Care to follow?”

“Uh-huh,” Jensen says, unable to take his eyes off of her. 

Rebecca grabs Cougar’s hand and leads him to the side exit, then pulls on the cord to signal the bus driver that they’re ready to get off. Which they are. All four of them. Anya does the same to Jake, who follows her like a lost puppy. 

Cougar has no idea what’s going to happen today, how it’ll pan out, if they’ll pair off or have an orgy or maybe one of them will watch the other three. But something is sure as shit gonna happen.

Does he secretly hope he’ll get to kiss Jensen? Maybe. He certainly won’t complain if he does, even if it’s under that _ hey-whoa-no-homo _ guise, that  _ it’s a threeway, we got carried away _ kind of thing. He’ll take whatever Jake wants to give him.

They’re a block away from the bus, headed in the direction of Anya’s apartment, when it occurs to Cougar that they’re missing something. He feels… lighter than he should. 

Backpack? Check. Gun? No, but he’s not supposed to have it, so that’s good. 

What else  _ were _ they carrying?

Jensen remembers at the same exact moment he does. Conversation ceases almost violently as they turn their heads toward each other in a panic. 

Emily!

Rebecca looks behind her when Jake abruptly cuts off conversation. The look of concern on her face is sweet. Cougar hopes they’ll consider hanging out later. They really do seem like nice girls.

But they forgot Jake’s  _ niece on a bus _ . So. Yeah. They’re probably not the kind of guys any sane girl wants to mate with. 

They take off in the opposite direction without looking back. The bus is about a block ahead but moving slow - maybe they can make it.  _ Maybe _ . 

_ Maybe _ becomes  _ definitely not _ when the bus leaves the stop sign at the end of the block and picks up speed. Cougar slows, attempting to pull Jake by his tee-shirt, but Jake pulls away and keeps sprinting.

“Jensen! Come back.”

Jensen doesn’t respond, doesn’t even slow down. 

Cougar kneels on the sidewalk with his head in his hands. Between Anya and Rebecca’s concerned questions and Jake’s panicked voice pointlessly beseeching the bus to stop, his head hurts. 

How fucking dumb  _ are _ they? 

He hears Jake give up with a pathetic wail. He’s several blocks and one big hill ahead, so Cougar settles on the sidewalk to wait for him and grabs a handful of grass to pull apart. The girls have left, and he can’t blame them. 

Jake flops to the grass next to Cougar with a groan. “Oh god, Cougs, she is going to kill me. This time next week you’ll be attending my funeral.”

Cougar grunts. 

“Yeah, I know, you’re in trouble, too. But not like me.”

“She’ll make you kill me yourself before turning on you.”

“Don’t give her that idea.”

Cougar stares at his grass and Jake at the sky. Thunderclouds are quickly approaching. It feels remarkably apt. 

“What do they do with forgotten babies? Is there a thing for forgotten babies? I feel like we’re not the first... well, I mean I hope we’re not the first. Or not… you know, not that I hope other babies have been left behind, it’s just… I can’t imagine what kind of idiot would do this. Other than us.”

Cougar grunts again. 

“Yeah, guess I could call the city. You’re a genius.” He reaches out to bump fists. Cougar obliges.

After forty-five minutes on the phone with no fewer than four government offices, they’ve got a direction in which to go. The Uber ride to the department of lost-and-found babies is another forty-five minutes, and Jake is shaking with exhaustion by the time they get there. Cougar had watched him go through stages - denial, terror, and finally acceptance of his fate at the hands of his sister. 

Jake cheers up a bit in the face of getting the kid back, though. Thank goodness for the Ident-A-Kid card in her pack, too; Cougar and Jake are listed as Emily’s guardians along with her mother, so it’s surprisingly less of a hassle than they’d feared. 

In fact, Cougar’s beginning to think they might get away with it when they’re led into the ‘baby room.’

And that’s where things  _ really _ go south.

“Here you are, sirs,” the receptionist says, opening the door. “You may pick up your... uh, your child here.” She gives them another once-over before returning to her station. 

“She thinks we’re gay, doesn’t she?” Jake asks, not yet having noticed the clusterfuck they now find themselves in.

“Uh... “

“Sure,” Jake responds, misunderstanding the edge of hesitation and panic in Cougar’s tone, “I mean, we’re in the military, but no one here’s gonna care. They’re pretty progressive in the northeast, all things considered... Oh.  _ Oh _ .” 

“Uh-huh.”

“ _ Shit _ . Cougs, what are we gonna do now?” 

The room is small and brightly painted, with a single changing bench and a spluttering fluorescent light. There are four cribs, two against each wall... and two of them are full. 

And Cougar’s smart, sure, he’s observant... but there are only so many details a man can keep in his head at once, and it had never occurred to him that he’d need to remember what type of onesie Emily had worn. 

What’s worse, Jake hadn’t either, if the look on his face is any indication.

Cougar shoos him into the room and closes the door behind them. This conversation does not need to happen in front of anyone, that’s for damn sure. 

Jake looks back and forth between the two babies, brow furrowed in confusion. It looks like he’ll be here all day, frozen in indecision, if Cougar doesn’t push the issue. 

“ _ Cabron _ ,” he hisses, smacking the back of Jake’s head, “we gotta figure it out.”

“Yeah,” Jake says numbly, “yeah, I know. We do.”

“Call your sister.”

Jake rounds on him, eyes wide and face pale. “No way! I thought I was in the clear.”

“But you’re not,” Cougar points out.

“Am too! Look,” Jake says, reaching out for one of the babies - randomly, Cougar thinks, “this is definitely what Emily had on. Ducks! Isn’t it?”

He sounds desperate, like a man pleading with the headsman as he’s led to the block.  _ Any last words, Jake Jensen? _

Honestly, Cougar doesn’t know. He can recall operational details like no one’s business and can calculate wind speed and direction and drop with his eyes closed, but the clothing choices of babies temporarily placed in his care are not the kind of details he’s going to remember. 

Actually, though... now that he thinks about it...  _ was _ she wearing the clown onesie? He’s pretty sure she has in the past. And she loved his little clown get-up he’d worn for their New Years party. 

Jake sees him eyeing the other baby and moans in despair. “We’ve gotta pick one.”

“We’ve gotta call your sister.” 

“No,” Jake says, and the tone of his voice informs Cougar right there and then that this goes Jake’s way or no way at all. “We know which one.”

“We do?”

“Flip a coin.”

Cougar closes his eyes. Shakes his head. Opens them. Stares at Jake. There’s no way he heard that right. 

“All babies look the same anyway.”

Wow, yeah, he really heard that right. 

“This is your  _ niece _ , Jensen.”

“Yeah. So?”

Cougar shouldn’t have to tell him  _ so _ . 

He’s still unable to believe this is actually happening when Jake pulls out a quarter and sets it on his thumb.

“Heads or tails?”

Try as he might, Cougar can’t force a word out of his mouth. He just can’t. 

“C’mon, Cougs. Heads or tails?”

Finally, he throws his hands up in the air. This isn’t even the worst of Jake’s ideas he’s gone along with. 

“Heads.”

Silver flashes through the air for a second before the coin lands on the carpet. Cougar leans down to see, but Jake snatches it before he can get a glimpse. 

“Whew, it’s heads.”

“But you didn’t assign heads to anything,” Cougar protests, and Jake gives him a confused look that he then turns on the babies. 

“Well, she must be the one with the ducks,” he concludes like it makes perfect sense.

“How do you figure?” 

“Because ducks have heads.”

“What kind of scary-ass clowns came to your birthdays?” Cougar asks after a beat, incredulous. 

“Look, do you have any better ideas?” Jake asks with a scowl as he picks up the baby in the duck onesie. 

“Calling your sister.”

“We’re taking this one. C’mon.”

Cougar crosses himself and prays for forgiveness as he follows Jake out the door and into the rain. 

He’s watching Jake play peek-a-boo with her in the back of the Uber ride home, slightly terrified of what Jess will do to them if this is the wrong baby, when Jake looks at him with a silly grin. 

“I’m just messin’ with you,” he tells Cougar with an elbow to the ribs. “I knew which was her the whole time.”

He laughs so hard at Cougar’s indignant expression, even Cougar can’t hold on to his irritation. They leave an extra tip for the Uber driver after, because the hysterical laughter of two grown men and a baby for thirty minutes are worth more than that poor bastard gets paid. 

  
  
  


***

  
  
  


Everything goes splendidly for most of the evening. Emily seems as happy as ever, and Jess coos over her like she’s her whole world. 

But when Jess leaves to change her diaper, it takes an awful long time for her to come back. Jensen is watching the Yankees murder the White Sox when she finally steps back into the living room, empty-handed. 

And the look on her face is enough for Cougar to know that Jake was right to be scared of this woman. 

She stands in front of Jake, blocking access to the television. He scoffs and makes a  _ shoo _ motion, but when she doesn’t move, he notices her face and quails. 

“Where is my child?” she asks, deceptively soft. 

“I, uh, I don’t know? Did you put her to sleep?”

Jess stands up to her full five foot four inches; with Jake on the chair, she towers over him. “That child in there is not my baby.  _ Where is my baby? _ ”

“I… uh… “

“What happened?” she asks, turning toward Cougar like she can’t stand the sight of her brother. 

“We left her on the bus. Jake flipped a coin at the baby lost-and-found.” 

Jake shoots him a look of utter betrayal, but it’s not like Cougar’s gonna cover his ass on this one. He wants to live to see his next birthday. 

She breathes heavily, in through her nose and out through her mouth. Cougar meets her eyes steadily, though inside he feels anything but. Eventually she reaches into her pocket and hands Jake her phone with a terse “fix it.”

Cougar can only shake his head.

  
  


***

  
  


“What were you thinking?” Jess asks as she smacks him upside the head with the rolled-up newspaper over and over again. 

“I was messing around, I told you!”

Cougar glances in the rearview mirror, laughing inwardly at Jake’s miserable expression. Well, he brought this on himself. 

“Seriously,” he continues plaintively, “I was right! You know I was right. You dressed her in that damn duck onesie this morning. I don’t forget shit like that, Jessica. It’s not my fault the receptionist switched their clothes when she changed their diapers.”

She grumbles but at least she stops assaulting him with the paper. 

“Anyway, Emily’s waiting for us at the baby drop place, or whatever. Everything’s fine.”

“I can’t believe you didn’t think to at least check,” Jess complains. 

“Check what? You think I know every little detail about Emily? I don’t see her every day like you do.”

“Well, you could’ve started by making sure the right equipment was there.”

Cougar snorts a laugh, unable to help himself. 

“And you! I thought you had better sense than that!” 

“He did, Jess,” Jake cuts in. “He told me several times to call you.”

“You’re so stupid, both of you. Stupid boys and their stupid penises, when the only stupid thing you should be doing is each other.”

Cougar snaps his head up while Jake gasps and puts his hand over his heart like a goddamn drama queen. 

_ “Ha _ ! And you thought no one knew? Really?”

“What, what? What do you mean? How did you know?” Jake asks in a panic.

Jess stares at him like he just called the sun blue. “Everybody knows, idiot.”

Jake.exe has stopped functioning, so Cougar steps in. “Who is  _ everybody? _ ” he asks carefully. 

“Well, Clay, Roque, Pooch, and I have a pool going to see when you’ll finally stop dancing around each other and fuck already.”

They’ve arrived at the precinct again. The cop at the desk leads them into the back right away, to an interrogation room where the other baby’s parents wait with Emily. As soon as Jess sees her little girl, she squeals and lunges for her. The other parents do the same. 

It’s overwhelming for Cougar, who nods at the cop on duty and steps out into the rain. The streets and sidewalks are slick and slippery. It makes Cougar feel like he’s walking through a veil and into another world, even though it’s just a parking lot on a moonless night. 

He reaches out to open the door but is grabbed from behind; at first, he goes for a weapon out of instinct, but he and Jake have wrestled enough for Cougar to identify the way the man moves, and besides, there’s no ill intent here. Quite the opposite, in fact. 

Jake maneuvers him around and presses him back against the car. He steps in close, presses up against him and runs fingers through his hair. Cougar’s hands settle on Jake’s hips, and it’s… comfortable. Less like a  _ gotcha! _ moment and more like a puzzle piece sliding into place. 

“Hi,” Jake breathes, and kisses him. 

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  



End file.
